“What the Plus” author Guy Kawasaki (Flickr Photo via tedmurphy) RPC7T8MDTG7H
Do you have any idea of what Google+ is?
And do you realize just how useful it could be to your business or brand in coming future?
If you answered no to either question than Guy Kawasaki’s book, ”What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us” is exactly what you need.
It will give you some killer tips, hacks and suggestions to getting the most out of Google+ while covering the best ways to share things and build meaningful relationships.
The 5 Main Themes of The Book
There are five main themes in this book.
- How to find people and get more followers (which Guy considers important though still less than building great relationships)
- How to share great stuff
- How to promote yourself respectfully
- How to handle the “bozos”
- How to stay “in the know”
Throughout all of that Guy gives you some great tips and hacks for getting the most out of Google+ that you probably haven’t thought of (yet).
6 Ways to Get the Most Out of Google+
Guy gives wonderful suggestions for Google+ extensions especially those that allow you to post your updates to Google+, Facebook and Twitter at the same time (thereby saving you time).
Unfortunately none of them do scheduling unless you happen to have HootSuite Enterprise.
Though I found his suggestions useful some of them are no longer working well like SGPlus.
Turns out you have to pay to get advanced features and staying connected requires constantly logging in.
Facebook in particular seems to have made it hard to cross post between Google+ and itself.
One additional suggestion I’d have added would have been the Google +1 Button for sharing anything any time.
Guy provides extension suggestions to improve your commenting experience and to kill off comments by trolls in one click.
Guy provides the nitty gritty details on how to organize your connections and circles and ways to share great posts.
What was surprising was the level of detail he goes into for sharing photos in the best format — it literally has a chapter of its own.
In addition he covers the best ways to comment and offers tips on how to use video chatting “Hangouts” on Google+.
Hint: Make sure you add extra lightning and check sound quality.
Humorous Thoughts on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The book has a lot of Guy’s uniquely funny sense of humour.
A lot of it revolves around “shiitake” mushrooms and helps give the book a down-to-earth vibe that endears Guy to his readers.
You’ll love his one line advice on SEO:
Just “Write.Good.Shit.”
Forget about the voodoo magic of Google.
Write, create or provide the best stuff you can (with a dose of your special personality) as much as you can and if it’s good people will share it.
There’s no real way to stack the odds.
Note: Read more about Guy Kawasaki’s enchanting humour in 7 Reasons to Love Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki.
Reviewers Add Their Own Chapters
Guy gets several of his reviewers to contribute chapters in areas where they Guy isn’t the expert.
It also works out because not everyone is Guy Kawasaki or has his kind of reality distortion field as one of the reviewers puts it.
This is certainly something that sets Guy’s books apart from Chris Brogan’s book on Google+ for Business for example.
Lynette Young, who manages Women of Google+ wrote Chapter 11: How to Thrive in the All- Boys’ Club while Dave Powell of ShootTokyo wrote Chapter 7: How to Share Photos.
As much as I respected the fact that Chapter 11 was included the advice really didn’t strike me as all that out of the ordinary really.
It felt like an echo of a lot of the material in the rest of the book including how to handle bozos.
Dave’s piece on photo sharing however had excellent advice that only a photo enthusiast would have known — such as the best way to centre someone’s face (and it’s not the exact centre).
What felt like it was missing was a talk about how different people in different jobs could have used Google+ better — visible minorities, authors, writers, real estate people, CEOs, sales people.
That was something that Chris Brogan did well in his book (though things like visible minorities and entrepreneurs were not covered there either).
The Relationship Building Advice is the Same Anywhere
Guy’s relationship building advice mirrors a lot of what he said in “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions” and mirrors the same kind of advice that Chris Brogan gives in Google+ for Business.
It all boils down to sharing good things, putting in some of your personality, treating people respectfully and being there to build community.
Other than that it was using that advice on a new social network on Google+.
The Formatting Nitty Gritty
I reviewed the PDF version of the book.
Guy had provided this to me for free I might add.
To be honest reading it on my iPhone was somewhat painful due to side to side scrolling.
If Guy had provided an .epub or .mobi version it would have made things a lot easier.
I’m sure the book is available on Amazon in Kindle form now so perhaps its not such a big issue.
The links in the table of contents worked however some of the other links throughout the text didn’t (such as those to the Chrome Extensions he suggested).
A minor detail that didn’t really detract from the overall experience.
Is Google+ the Way to Go?
It’s one of the fastest growing social networks around.
It has huge benefits for boosting your visibility in search however it’s also got a wonderful photo sharing platform that’s better than Facebook and Twitter.
It also gives you a huge advantage in writing full length posts almost like a blog.
Neither Guy Kawasaki or Chris Brogan recommend doing that however.
Think of Google+ as an outpost.
Overall, “What the Plus” by Guy Kawasaki is a great book that provides a very detailed how to guide for building relationships on Google’s social network.
It really gets into the nitty gritty of how to do different things with plenty of pictures to show the step-by-step process.
Guy really covers all the bases for getting started with Google+ for the beginner and mid level user and the whole book is written in a very down to earth language.
In fact it sounds like Guy is holding a conversation with you one-to-one.
Creating value means sharing a lot in the shortest time possible and this book is definitely like that.
If you ever need more help you can always connect straight with Guy and his network.
Sincerely,
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